Would you believe, 61F in St. Louis on January 9, 2009, clear skies and almost no wind! And not only that, I finally got all the ducks lined up with regard to installing the Barrett Lycoming IO360-X, AFP fuel injection system and Catto prop. What a break with this beautiful day - it was time to launch. With neighbors John and Gloria Roser flying chase in their RV-6A, N707DD took to the air for the first time since July 17 when it was grounded for the engine change from the Subby H6.
The flight was almost uneventful with oil temp topping out at 170F and the highest CHT observed to be 348F. The engine with the Catto 3 blade prop is almost as smooth as the Subaru. This was an engine break-in flight so not much happened for 30-40 minutes running at about 75% at 4500'. Observed fuel flow was like 19 gph so for sure the EIS 4000 flow sensor needs a different calibration number than 200, the engine can not be burning that much fuel.
But when both tanks got down to about 7 gallons, I decided to make for the barn. John and Gloria were standing by at 2500' taking pictures of the sun set when I commented I can't get this thing to slow down. Fixed pitch verses constant speed prop makes for a completely different flying experience. Finally I got it back 80 knots and lowered 20 flaps and on final went to 40. Problem was, I was a bit high to clear the trees on the west end of our 2200' runway and even with idle power the thing accelerated to 85 knots from about 70 real quick when I did the usual dump over the trees and I decided this is not going to work so power up to go around. On the go the flaps retracted to about 15 and that was it. The flap motor failed! Well, long story short, it took 3 approaches to finally get the thing lined up, on speed, clear the trees, not accelerate and land. What worked was coming in low and slow at 70 knots with a little power, not dump it over the trees but make a constant on speed descent to the touch down point at about the 1500' foot mark on the runway. The airplane was easily stopped in about 1000' even with the slightly melted frost grass surface.
Not much more to say about the flight except the take off performance definitely was anemic compared to the H6 and the MT constant speed prop. With this engine I am experimenting with a direct un-filtered ram air intake, but I don't have the nerve to use it on the ground yet, so it was filtered air from inside the cowl for take off. Once I got to about 1000' AGL I slowly opened the ram air inlet and closed the filtered air intake. Wow! RPM went up from 2250 to 2450 like right now. The airplane felt like it got a kick in the butt, it do make a difference. I'm undecided whether or not to stick with this internal filtered air set up but I guess I can think about it while fixing the darn flap motor.
Beyond that, it sure is good to be flying again.
N707DD is Flying Again...:)
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